Startup mines silver and gold from e-waste

But it probably contains small amounts of some very valuable things: gold, silver, palladium, copper. Gather enough old computers and cell phones together and you don’t just have a heap of obsolete technology — you have veins of metal to mine.

Enter BlueOak Resources, a San Francisco startup. The company on Tuesday broke ground in Arkansas on its first “urban mining refinery,” a facility that will extract precious materials from e-waste. If all goes as planned, BlueOak will built similar refineries across the country, each one processing e-waste from the surrounding area.

“When you look at what’s in the electronic scrap, you realize there’s a lot of value locked in there,” said Privahini Bradoo, the four-year-old company’s CEO. “You could try to access these metals by digging a hole in the ground, or you could refine the scrap.”

According to BlueOak’s estimate, the world generates about 50 million tons of e-waste per year, with only 15 percent of it recycled.

Most e-waste gets buried in landfills. Some makes its way to China or India for recycling, but those operations tend to be primitive, tainting the local soil, air and water. Canada and Europe have more environmentally friendly facilities for recycling e-waste. But for U.S. companies, using those facilities means paying for shipping.

A system of domestic e-waste refineries scattered around the country makes far more sense, Bradoo said. It could also create a new, domestic source of highly sought-after metals.

The company’s first facility, in Osceola, Arkansas will initially process about 15 million pounds of electronic scrap each year, although the company wants to expand from there. BlueOak has raised $35 million to build the refinery and expects it to open by the end of 2015. Investors include such heavy-hitters as Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, TriplePoint Capital and TeraWatt Ventures.

“We like to call this the confluence of Silicon Valley and industrial America,” Bradoo said. “It’s one type of manufacturing we can stay very competitive in.”